Archive for category: LivingEd – Charlotte

Author: Thomas White | Editorial Staff, Living Church of God

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We’re often told to think about the “big picture” of Christ’s return and the soon-coming eternal Kingdom of God. But when you’re young, even the small picture seems absolutely enormous.

Learning to drive a car is terrifying when you’ve previously only driven—and crashed—a Mario Kart. Getting married is unbelievably, mind-breakingly immense when the whole of your existence has been not married. Young adults doing their best to meaningfully visualize eternity will probably be about as successful as preschoolers trying to ponder the theory of relativity, and I say that as a young adult.

Mr. Phil Sena’s recent assembly—delivered via the internet, due to this virus you may have heard of—addressed how difficult it can be, as a teenager or young adult, to focus your life on the Kingdom of God while also… you know, managing all of the really important, earthly milestones young people naturally have to deal with. Because you have to finish school. You have to get a job. You’d really, really like to marry someone and have children, and then you have to make sure you don’t neglect that spouse or those children. And in the midst of all of this, you have to remember how temporary everything is—even though right now it’s legitimately quite important—so you have to keep talking to God. You have to keep pondering His ways and commands. You have to keep fasting, you have to keep spending time with the Bible, you have to keep examining yourself.

Your Part of the Picture

That really is a big picture, and it’s legitimately difficult to keep up with everything. But it’s also a tiny picture—because it’s only about you. When you’re trying really hard not to make a physical mess of your life, and doing your best not to make a spiritual mess of it, either, it can be all too easy to miss the fact that you’re just one person. Yes, God cares so very deeply about you, and you should never, ever forget that, but even your eternity is just one eternity. 

You know what’s bigger than an eternity? Read the title again.

According to that nifty little internet we’re all using to maintain some semblance of normality these days, it’s estimated that around 100 billion people have lived on Earth up to this point. And hey, you’re one of them! Congratulations. That means the Kingdom of God is 0.000000001 percent about you. That’s how big a part of the picture your one eternity is.

Their Part

As Mr. Sena profoundly emphasized, the world needs God’s Kingdom. It’s about so much more than your personal salvation or mine, and it’s even about so much more than the collective saints of God being transformed in the first resurrection. It’s about rescuing everyone in the entire history of the world. It’s about redeeming not just our time, but the whole of time itself. It’s about one hundred billion eternities.

That’s a big picture. And if our first thought of the Kingdom is usually, “Oh boy, I sure hope I make it there,” we’re forgetting 99.999999999 percent of that picture. We should never stop striving to enter God’s Family, because that’s literally the entire point of human existence (Ecclesiastes 12:13), but when we’re trying to think of the big picture, let’s at least remind ourselves that the vast majority of that picture isn’t about us—and let’s thank God for the fact that regardless of any one of us, the Kingdom will come, creating an unfathomably joyful universe of one hundred billion eternities. 

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Thomas White was one of the onsite Living Education students for the 2018-2019 semesters. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Thomas currently works as an Editorial Assistant for the Living Church of God. According to his wife, he eats pizza in entirely the wrong way.

Author: Thomas White | Living Church of God, Editorial Department

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“Be honest. Don’t hide who you are. Be genuine. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. Be yourself.”

We’ve heard all of that before. Even Mr. Richard Ames’ recent assembly, a powerful message of improving one’s interpersonal communication, addressed the importance of openness and honesty—in essence, being yourself.

But it’s understandable if we think, “Wait a minute, be myself? That’s the last thing I want to be. Doesn’t God say that the heart is deceitful and wicked? Yeah, no, I’m way too aware of the terrible thoughts I’m constantly battling to be myself with anybody. Myself is awful, so to the best of my ability, I’m going to not be it, thanks.”

Actually, though, that perspective has it backwards. When you get down to it, all of the ungodly thoughts we have, words we say, and actions we take are the result of us not being ourselves—and instead, imitating someone truly awful.

Mr. Nathan Weighs In

To explain, I’ll turn to a quote from Mr. Peter Nathan. In the September-October 2019 Living Church News article “A Tale of Two Goats,” he wrote this:

Scripture describes Satan as having deceived the whole world (Revelation 12:9) and as having played a role in mankind’s sin from the very beginning (Genesis 3:1–5). It is on Satan’s head that the ultimate responsibility for sin rests. Jesus Christ, our High Priest, has already paid the penalty of sin for mankind. Satan, as the deceiver of all humanity, is to carry his responsibility for that sin, confessed over his head, from the presence of God.

– Mr. Peter Nathan, “A Tale of Two Goats”, LCN: Sep-Oct 2019

Now, obviously (because sometimes the obvious needs to be made super obvious at the risk of it not being obvious), Mr. Nathan isn’t saying that any of us are off the hook for our sins. I’m responsible for my sin. You’re responsible for your sin. But also, Satan is responsible for all sin—mine, yours, everyone’s. He doesn’t force anyone into anything, but each and every time we sin in any way, we’re hearing his suggestion and replying, “… Yeah, sure, okay. Seems like a good idea.”

Being Yourself is Resisting the Devil

The heart is deceitful and wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) because it’s so willing to listen to Satan’s deceitful and wicked influence, not because it’s conjuring up that influence all by itself. Our original ancestors, for example: It’s not like Adam and Eve were side-eyeing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for months, and when a snake started talking, they thought, “Oh good, now I finally have an excuse.” No—they heard the devil’s suggestion and they took it, just like we do when we sin.

Before Satan shows up, we don’t read anything about Eve or Adam being tempted in the slightest by the forbidden fruit. They knew it was there, they knew God didn’t want them near it, and they were on board with that. Were they just “not themselves” before Satan’s deception? Of course they were themselves—God creates children, not clones. If anything, they were more themselves than they ever would be again in their physical lives, because they weren’t yet affected by Satan’s suggestions.

We’re all affected by those suggestions, but it’s when we refuse them that we’re who God made us to be. When we take those suggestions and thereby sin, we’re not ourselves at all—we’re Satan imitators. He’s the one who wants clones. God, though, wants us to exercise the free will He gave us and be nothing less than ourselves.

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Thomas White was one of the onsite Living Education students for the 2018-2019 semesters. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Thomas currently works as an Editorial Assistant for the Living Church of God. According to his wife, he eats pizza in entirely the wrong way.

Author: William Williams | Editorial Department, Living Church of God

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Have you ever been in a situation where you knew something you planned to do wouldn’t “look right,” but since you believed you weren’t going to “do anything wrong,” you went ahead with it anyway?

Perhaps the “Mike Pence” rule just seemed inconvenient that one time—especially if the circumstances really didn’t seem like the kind where anything truly compromising could happen. Maybe there wouldn’t be time for anything to happen. Maybe you and the people you planned to be with have good reputations, and people just know you better than to think you’d misbehave in some particular way or another. And maybe people should “mind their own business”—especially when such situations don’t always involve spending time with members of the opposite sex, but could simply be the kind of happenstance that maaaybe would look like you were doing something inappropriate on the Sabbath—when you weren’t—or juuust might seem like you were staying out late drinking and partying—which you don’t!

Of course, life is full of decisions, and not all decisions or actions can be helped regarding how others perceive them. If we worried about how our every single action might be perceived, we would certainly wastea lot of time. But we also know that God cares about how our behavior affects others, so it isn’t always worry but consideration. And when it comes to something that could seriously affect your reputation—or cause others to stumble—the matter deserves consideration.

The Appearance of Evil

“Reputation and the Appearance of Evil” was in fact Dr. Scott Winnail’s most recent Living Education address, and an especially vital topic for Christians today. Analyzing situations where individuals knew their decisions might give others “the wrong idea” was a chief part of his lecture. However, far from simply mowing down the assembled students with a list of “do’s” and “don’ts”, Dr. Winnail instead engaged in a give-and-take session about why people might inadvertently put their reputations at risk and how to avoid the appearance of evil—and he reminded them of the oft-repeated quote by Warren Buffett that a good reputation can take decades to develop, but be destroyed in five minutes.

Dr. Scott gave several examples of situations that can potentially tarnish one’s reputation, and what stood out most importantly to me was the absence of condemnation. Leaving behind most discussion of when people do fall into sin when they “skirt the edge of the cliff,” his focus was mainly on how to maintain a good reputation and make sure that pure motivations go hand in hand with—and even promote—pure perceptions.

Assume or Presume?

Throughout the discussion, a singular thought crossed my mind: presumptions lead to assumptions! We all know (or should know) that assume is a dirty word, but what about presume? If assuming is jumping to a conclusion when we don’t have all the facts (the very thing we don’t want people to do regarding our actions) presuming is assuming ahead of time how a certain thing will or should turn out (or how people will or should respond to those same actions!). And if, as Henry “the Fonz” Winkler was famous for saying, “Assumptions are the termites of relationships,” then presumptions are the overlooked food source that attracts them!

Dr. Scott suggested some questions his listeners should ask themselves before taking certain actions, including, “Why do I want to do this?,” “What are the possible outcomes?,” “How will my actions be perceived?,” and “Could someone imitate me and thereby fall into condemnation?”

In every case, here’s one bit of handy reasoning to add: “Don’t presume too much about how others will perceive your actions!” I’ve been told many times that “You can’t control what other people think,” but here’s a secret: you can, to a certain degree, by your own choice to “walk circumspectly” (Ephesians 5:15).

What looks like a duck…

As always, the best lessons are the ones we apply to ourselves, and thus I turn the lens around: Justifying something based on what people should think is a presumption. Thinking people will always know my future actions are honest based on my current reputation is a presumption. And stating that people should “mind their own business” is a naïve presumption at best—and a rejection of Philippians 2:29 and Romans 14:13 at worst. (Not to mention the fact that saying it out loud can easily become an example of just exactly what I’m talking about when someone takes it the wrong way and thinks, “Whoa, what a jerk that guy is.” If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…)

With that, I can conclude:

• I’m not the arbiter of what others should think—so I should think out my own actions before committing to them, as Dr. Winnail stressed.

• I’m not the paragon of virtue I’d like to think of myself as—and I can’t place the burden of exonerating me on others, who have daily struggles and distractions all their own to think about.

• And I’m not by any means the one who gets to decide where others should be on the path to their conversion, such that I can blame them for “minding” my business—especially when my business breathes the same air God gave everyone else to swim around in.

Or so I should presume.

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